


Doctor Who Metas

by PrettyArbitrary



Series: PA's Metas [3]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Analysis, Character Analysis, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2019-09-14 16:06:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16916010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyArbitrary/pseuds/PrettyArbitrary
Summary: My collected Doctor Who metas, moved over from Tumblr.





	1. The Time Lords

**"The Fury of the Time Lords" gifset: "He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing." (from "The Family of Blood")  
**

This is one of my favorite things from New Who.  In my head, this is the Time Lords.  You can’t really see what they are.  They don’t unfurl themselves.  It’s not really safe for the universe for them to do so.

In my head, this is what Rassilon did for them, you see.  Old Who told us that before him, they were barbaric.  What’s a barbaric Time Lord like?  Living hubris.  As humans fall to wrath and war when civilization is stripped away, Time Lords fall to pride.  A Time Lord unleashed is a pitiless god.  There’s nothing to stop her from playing with creation any way she likes.  And we’re told that they did, once upon a time.  They destroyed races that crossed them, races that were themselves nearly gods.  They played with time like a Tinkertoy set.

Rassilon, we’re told, taught them control.  That’s why they revere him.  After him, they damped themselves down.  Made themselves small.  Retreated into their little bubble on the planet Gallifrey where they quietly smoothed out the kinks of time and space and took care of accidents and messes in the space-time continuum and otherwise stopped interfering.

Which is why Time Lords like the Doctor and the Master are anathema.  They _interfere_.  Which matters in a far greater sense than some Prime Directive.  A Time Lord overrides time.  The Doctor’s actions leave scars on the universe.  He can change the flow of time, but the things _he_ does are inviolate–to him, at least.  Perhaps other Time Lords could change it, but imagine what a disaster it would make to have two Time Lords careening around, crossing paths and doing whatever they wanted.  Imagine the havoc that would be wreaked by a whole planetful of them behaving like that.

Once upon a time, the Doctor didn’t have to worry about it.  The Time Lords were there to fix things when he sent things off-kilter.  Now, though, it’s only him.

The thing about him becoming a monster when he doesn’t have people to bring him under control irritates the heck out of me.  As though somehow he has no personal self-control?  (Well, okay, it doesn’t always look like it, does it?  But come on, his people spent BILLIONS of years sitting quietly and behaving themselves.  It’s not like they turn into psychopaths every time somebody drops a plate.)  But the thought that he has a burning core of hubris beneath the cheerful smiles?  The idea that he’s insanely, incomprehensibly dangerous somewhere under that goofy exterior?  Oh yes.  In my head, you never _really_ get to see the Doctor.  He keeps so much of what he is buried down inside himself, because what he is in the core of him is more than any other creature can fathom.

But he mainly refuses to be that.  Because that is what a Time Lord is, and he disowned them ages ago.

I tell myself a lot of stories about Doctor Who.


	2. The Time Lords

I just realized what annoys me off so much about this line, and the themes and plots it emerges from.

It completely ignores the autonomy of the Doctor’s companions. It is so condescending, so holier-than-thou. As if the Doctor is such an overwhelming force in their lives that it wipes out all their ability to do anything but go with him, anything but try to please him.

They don’t shine for HIM. They shine because they’re remarkable people and remarkable people shine, and that’s why he liked them in the first place.

Before Moffat, the Doctor used to know that his friends’ lives and choices were their responsibility. And if they decided to do something that he didn’t agree with–and they did, because some of them were soldiers and some were warriors and one or two were even assassins–then that was on them. And he used to respect them enough to talk to them about it if he thought there was a problem–not carry around THEIR choices on HIS shoulders as if they were robots he’d programmed.

This kind of manufactured angst is not only arrogant and self-centered, but it’s an act of erasure. It rejects the idea that other people have agency. It treats them like children incapable of making their own decisions, and belittles them by denying that they are strong and aware enough to bear the responsibility of their own lives. And it’s bullying; it’s using someone’s admiration and guilt to manipulate and/or browbeat them into behaving the way you want them to.

And sometimes it’s the Doctor who does all this. But more often it’s the show. Occasionally Rory or Martha or someone will shout at him about it, but more often we get some villain screaming about how the Doctor’s companions worship the ground he walks on and look what he’s turned them into and the Doctor putting on his guilty face like it’s all true, and not a single damn person saying, “Screw you, I’m doing this because I believe it’s right or at least it’s the best I could do in a bad situation.”

Which makes it MORE nauseating for me, because then I feel like the show is framing it as if it’s true or good, like this is some admirable hero-angst to act like everybody else’s choices revolve around you. It makes the Doctor seem skeevy, AND it makes his companions seem skeevy when they consistently don’t say a word, because that’s just passing the buck and LETTING somebody else take responsibility for all the things you’d prefer not to admit about yourself.


	3. The Doctor's Evolution

I watched "Fires of Pompeii" last night, and while I'm not including spoilers for it, it did make me think about the Doctor in general, and where Doctor Who is going.

I've wondered for a while what the heck Davies is thinking. While much of Who is as it ever was (the overlay of the fire on the one scene in FoP was so classically cheesy that I wanted to cheer), also much is not, and some of the differences are...weird. Off-putting, even. Aside from Davies' obsession with Bigger Louder Flashier (god, I wish he'd stop that), sometimes this Doctor acts like a heartless jerk. I won't quite call him monstrous, but he's definitely inhuman. And while one of my favorite things about the Doctor has always been how he can be extremely Not Human, Ten sometimes displays a callousness that isn't like the Doctor at all...or wait. Is it?

Cast your mind back, if you can, to the First Doctor. This man, old and wise and so sharp he could cut himself (and sometimes did), behaved like an utter bastard on a frequent basis. He was prickly and aloof and coldly refused to get involved, because that just Wasn't What He Did (although we saw him get involved, didn't we, whenever it served his own purposes). He displayed the "look but don't touch" philosophy that would later come to be associated with the Time Lords as a society.

Compare this to Ten's "there are things I must not change" attitude and his ruthless elimination of those with intent to meddle, and think about it. Even aside from One, he's not the first ruthless, heartless Doctor. Six could be a vicious jackass and Seven ruthlessly played even his friends like chess pieces. As he so often points out, Ten is the last of his kind. Considering the Doctor's usual predilections, might this not be an overcompensation, an attempt to BE the last of his kind and uphold their principles if he's the only one left to represent them?

Puts a new spin on his desperation for the Master. Of course, it's futile to hope that the Master of all people would ever take up the position of Guardian Time Lord, and while I do believe this Doctor is off his rocker, I'm not sure he could be so far gone as to believe that he could "save" the Master in such a way as to make him willing to be the last representative of his race--certainly not while the Doctor gets to gallivant off, free of responsibility. The Doctor would have to be descended into a complete schizophrenic break with reality to think that, but it's a perspective.

Anyway. Something Donna did--or rather, got the Doctor to do--made me start considering the roles of the companions in relation to the Doctor. Each of the companions since the beginning of the new series has left her mark on him (notable in itself, since in the old series it was rare for him to display it when people affected him).

Rose was his lifeline. He came in, angry and traumatized, and pristinely innocent, warm-hearted Rose offered him a place to hide. She was his shelter from all the violence and pain. And now I think of it, it makes perfect sense that Rose merged with the TARDIS, his one constant companion, home, and memento of his past, because Rose is the mother figure, protector and comforting oasis amid life's torments. No wonder he clings to her so desperately.

But he loses her (as eventually happens with mothers), and we come to Martha. When he meets her, Martha's not a doctor yet, but she will be--and by the end, she's not just a doctor, but she's a doctor in the Doctor's image: she seems to possess a bottomless well of compassion and strength, which she makes freely available to the Doctor (sometimes whether he wants it or not). Rose never pushes, because her Doctor just needs time. Martha has a healer's instinct for when to push. She guides the Doctor back to his belief in mercy.

And now we come to Donna, and I think I see what she's doing. She's giddy with adventure, but she's not young like the others. This is a woman who has known hardship, who can watch people die with tears in her eyes but without breaking, and still insist that the Doctor do something, anything, whatever he's capable of if he can't fix it all. This is what Barbara did for the First Doctor: she taught him that life demands to be lived, not simply observed. She demanded his participation, his emotional investment, gave him a perspective on life that involved every tiny spark of it being infinitely precious without compromise for the big picture. Donna's job, I suspect, is to remind him of that lesson, and also that even if you can't save them all, it's still a small victory if you can at least save one.


	4. The Master in the Doctor's Evolution

"But what's this?" you say. "She's barely said anything about the Master's effect on him!" (I have a lot of Master-fans on my f-list, and I know they're saying this.) Well, I was discussing companions and their effects on him, but since you ask so nicely...

Seriously, I'm not entirely sure what the effect of Season 3's finale is on the Doctor. It seems possible that there isn't meant to be any long-term impact beyond the generic angst of "I failed to save the only other Time Lord!" because sometimes TV tells us that bad guys dying doesn't matter, though that's not a traditionally Who attitude.

But some concrete points make me think the Master's memory has a role to play. Davies said in an interview that the by-word for this season would be something the Master said. Being a proper obsessive Whovian, I watched the three episodes in the season closer to see if I could pick anything up (not that it was a grueling task), and by bet was on "I never could resist a ticking clock." It seemed likely, if you took that to mean countdowns and last chances and that sort of thing. But while so far we've certainly had our share of "time is running out!" moments (and if you count those, then possibly 'ticking clock' pertains to every episode of Doctor Who ever), what has stood out more to me is the way peoples' planets apparently keep vanishing.

Note, from "Sound of Drums":  
Master: "Where is it, Doctor?"  
Doctor: "Gone."  
Master: "How can Gallifrey be gone?"

And in both episodes of this season so far (note: really not a spoiler, because in both cases this plays no role beyond a seemingly throwaway 'how come the alien's here?' rationale):  
Doctor: "What happened to your planet?"  
Alien: "It's gone."  
Doctor *with dark and tragic eyes full of painful memories*: "What, just gone? How can you lose an entire planet?"

I'm interested in this because I love figuring out puzzles, and because I hold out hope that, somehow, events this season will be fallout from the Master, because we didn't get to see enough of him in two + an ending scene episodes of the finale.

But as for the finale itself? There was definitely an element of the second chance in it. The Doctor failed once and had to blow up his home and all his people, but now here he is with another home and population threatened and he gets to save everybody so well that most of them don't even know anything ever happened. Hooray! Direct redemption. Only, it really wasn't, was it? A guy doesn't scream like that over someone's dead body and then mope fiercely through a Christmas special if he feels like he's validated himself.

(As an aside, the Christmas special was pretty interesting in itself. Notice how it's almost like he's the only real thing on that dead ship? Or maybe more like he's the ghost and only the ship and the destruction are real? It doesn't help that the results barely look like he had any effect at all. It's also another indication that the Master had a lasting effect on him. When he kicks the teleportation machine and screams "I can do anything!" as if it were a denial of his imminent failure, he's reacting not only to Astrid's loss, but the ones he's trying to make up for. And he didn't lose anyone else in the last few story arcs; he saved everyone but the Master.)

I mentioned elsewhere that there might also be an element of escape to it. If there's another Time Lord then that might relieve the Doctor of at least some of the burden he so keenly feels over being the last. Of course, I also commented that I thought it would be asinine of him to believe that the Master is in any way a candidate for being trusted with responsibility.

But I find it hard to believe that his identity--the Master, the one Time Lord the Doctor has dealt with more than any other, the Time Lord he knows better than any other--is not significant. It's even brought into focus when the Doctor tells him, "Through all our battles, I've always had the greatest weapon of all. I know you." This isn't just about a traumatized survivor reaching out for whatever he can grab. There's personal history here.


End file.
